Tag: vanity-fair

New OS X uses Windows file sharing by default

@darth News about the new release of OS X, ” Mavericks ,” is trickling out as developers and other WWDC attendees post information about it to the Internet. However, hidden a bit down in Apple’s OS X Mavericks Technology Overview document is an interesting tidbit: SMB2 is replacing AFP as the default file sharing protocol for OS X. AFP— Apple Filing Protocol —has a long pedigree that stretches all the way back to the Mac’s early days (and even a bit before that). Contemporary AFP piggybacks on top of TCP/IP for transport, but it supports a few Mac-specific things that other network file protocols don’t, like type and creator codes. These don’t matter as much as they used to, but OS X’s HFS+ file system supports a pretty rich amount of metadata, and AFP transports and preserves that metadata. But AFP isn’t particularly friendly to non-Apple systems, and no operating systems other than OS X support it natively. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that one of OS X’s killer features, Time Machine, only works over a LAN with destinations that support AFP. This is at least in part because of Time Machine’s reliance on Unix hard links, and also in part because it has to be able to ensure that any OS X files with HFS+ specific metadata are correctly preserved. This in turn means that third-party Time Capsule devices have to rely on reverse-engineered implementations of AFP to continue functioning, and OS X updates occasionally break third-party Time Capsule devices, sometimes for weeks. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New OS X uses Windows file sharing by default

Espionage malware infects raft of governments, industries around the world

Kaspersky Lab Security researchers have blown the whistle on a computer-espionage campaign that over the past eight years has successfully compromised more than 350 high-profile targets in 40 countries. “NetTraveler,” named after a string included in an early version of the malware, has targeted a number of industries and organizations, according to a blog post published Tuesday by researchers from antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab. Targets include oil industry companies, scientific research centers and institutes, universities, private companies, governments and governmental institutions, embassies, military contractors and Tibetan/Uyghur activists. Most recently, the group behind NetTraveler has focused most of its efforts on obtaining data concerning space exploration, nanotechnology, energy production, nuclear power, lasers, medicine, and communications. “Based on collected intelligence, we estimate the group size to about 50 individuals, most of which speak Chinese natively and have working knowledge of the English language,” the researchers wrote. “NetTraveler is designed to steal sensitive data as well as log keystrokes, and retrieve file system listings and various Office of PDF documents.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Espionage malware infects raft of governments, industries around the world

France removes Internet cut-off threat from its anti-piracy law

This street art in eastern France reads: “Hadopi: The French Internet is under control!” mathias France finally put an end to the most extreme measure of its famous “three strikes” anti-piracy regime: no one will face being cut off from the Internet. The law is better known by its French acronym, Hadopi. In the last few years under the law, the Hadopi agency famously set up a system with graduating levels of warnings and fines . The threat of being cut off entirely from the Internet was the highest degree, but that penalty was never actually put into place. “Getting rid of the cut-offs and those damned winged elephants is a good thing. They’re very costly,” Joe McNamee, of European Digital Rights, quipped to Ars. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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France removes Internet cut-off threat from its anti-piracy law

Windows 8.1 gains boot-to-desktop to attract business users

At TechEd North America today, Microsoft unveiled a host of features coming in Windows 8.1 that should make the operating system more appealing to business users. Windows 8.1 is a free update to Windows 8 that will ship  later this year . On top of bringing back a Taskbar-visible Start button , Windows 8.1 will give enterprises a lot more control over the operating system’s appearance. Chief among these controls is the ability to boot straight to the desktop, a feature found in prerelease versions of Windows 8 but not officially supported in the final version. Additionally, IT departments can now exact more control over the Start screen, fixing its layout and prepopulating it with tiles for corporate apps. At its most extreme, this will allow IT departments to turn Windows 8 machines into kiosks, booting into specific Metro apps. If the built-in capabilities aren’t sufficient, Microsoft will be releasing an embeddable version. The catchily-named Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry will be for use in things like point-of-sale systems and ATMs. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 8.1 gains boot-to-desktop to attract business users

Two CPUs, two batteries, two OSes: Asus announces Transformer Book Trio

The Asus Transformer Book Trio takes the dockable tablet concept to the next level. Asus Asus has long offered a line of Android tablets that slot into keyboard docks, but at its Computex press conference it announced it would be taking this concept one step further. Its new Transformer Book Trio is a tablet running Android (an unspecified version of Jelly Bean, to be a bit more precise); when docked, it becomes a Haswell-equipped Windows 8 Ultrabook. The laptop contains all the ingredients for a standard Ultrabook in its base: a 4th-generation Haswell CPU, 1TB of storage, an unspecified amount of RAM, and a 33WHr battery. Behind the 11.6-inch 1080p display is an entirely separate computer based on Intel’s Clover Trail+ Atom platform: the 2GHz Atom Z2580, 2GB of RAM, 64GB of solid-state storage, and a 19WHr battery. When the laptop is docked, Engadget reports that a button press will switch between the Windows 8 installation in the base and the Android installation in the lid. Undocking the lid switches the tablet to a full-time Android tablet, though since the hardware is x86-based, one wonders if Windows 8 couldn’t be installed on it with some effort. The device combines a couple of concepts that Asus is already using elsewhere. Its Transformer Pad tablets have long been keyboard-dockable, and the Transformer AiO also uses a detachable screen to double as a tablet (though in that case the tablet’s hardware is ARM-based). Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Two CPUs, two batteries, two OSes: Asus announces Transformer Book Trio

Haswell is here: we detail Intel’s first 4th-generation Core CPUs

Intel is announcing the first of its fourth-generation Core processors based on the “Haswell” architecture. Intel Intel has been releasing information about Haswell, its next-generation CPU architecture, for months now. Our coverage has already been fairly extensive—we’ve already got a nice overview of Haswell’s CPU architecture itself, along with a primer on its brand-new integrated GPUs . All we need to know now is specific product information, and Intel is finally giving us our first official taste of that today. This morning’s announcements revolve around high-end quad-core chips in the Core i7 and Core i5 families, 12 for desktops and ten for laptops. If you’re looking for specific information about U- and Y- series low-voltage chips for Ultrabooks or anything belonging to the Core i3, Pentium, or Celeron families, you’ll have to wait a little while longer. We’ll be sure to pass that information along as we have it. What we’ll do here is present a high-level recap of the CPU, GPU, and chipset enhancements Intel is introducing in Haswell. After that, we’ll break down the specific CPUs that Intel is announcing today, and the kinds of systems you’re likely to find them in. Note that all of this information is coming directly from Intel—they’re not going to out-and-out make things up, but they’re definitely going to present their CPUs in the best possible light. We’ll be putting all of the below performance claims to the test as we begin to review Haswell-based systems later this summer. Read 30 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Haswell is here: we detail Intel’s first 4th-generation Core CPUs

In wake of Liberty Reserve bust, Mt. Gox will require user verification

On Thursday, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, announced that it would require all users to “be verified in order to perform any currency deposits and withdrawals. Bitcoin deposits do not need verification, and at this time we are not requiring verification for Bitcoin withdrawals.” The company did not provide any explanation about why it was imposing this new requirement, but it did say that it would be able to process most verifications within 48 hours. The move comes two days after federal prosecutors went after Liberty Reserve , another online currency that had notoriously poor verification. (In court documents, a federal investigator in that case included an address of “123 Fake Main Street, Completely Made Up City, New York” to create an account that was accepted.) It also comes two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security started investigating Mt. Gox over the possible crime of money transmitting without a license. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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In wake of Liberty Reserve bust, Mt. Gox will require user verification

FiOS customer discovers the limits of “unlimited” data: 77TB a month

Yes, Virginia, there is a limit to what Verizon will let you do with FiOS’ “unlimited” data plan. And a California man discovered that limit when he got a phone call from a Verizon representative wanting to know what, exactly, he was doing to create more than 50 terabytes of traffic on average per month—hitting a peak of 77TB in March alone. “I have never heard of this happening to anyone,” the 27-year-old Californian—who uses the screen name houkouonchi and would prefer not to be identified by name—wrote in a post on DSLreports.com entitled ” LOL VZ called me about my bandwidth usage Gotta go Biz. ” “But I probably use more bandwidth than any FiOS customer in California, so I am not super surprised about this.” Curious about how one person could generate that kind of traffic, Ars reached out to houkouonchi and spoke with him via instant message. As it turns out, he’s the ultimate outlier. His problem is more that he’s violated Verizon’s terms of service than his excessive bandwidth usage. An IT professional who manages a test lab for an Internet storage company, houkouonchi has been providing friends and family a personal VPN, video streaming, and peer-to-peer file service—running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage in his house. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FiOS customer discovers the limits of “unlimited” data: 77TB a month

Tim Cook confirms: Apple spending $100 million to build new Macs in Texas

Apple is looking to bring even more Mac production back to the states. Andrew Cunningham Last week, we learned that Apple was looking to devote about $100 million to bring the manufacturing of one of its Mac product lines back to the United States. At yesterday’s Senate hearings on the company’s untaxed overseas pile of cash, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that the new Mac would be manufactured in Texas. The computer will also “include components made in Illinois and Florida and rely on equipment produced in Kentucky and Michigan.” Moving away from solid facts and into informed speculation, AllThingsD  notes that longtime Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn has facilities in Texas that may be used to build the new Mac. Apple is also building a campus in Austin, Texas, indicating that the company may continue to expand in the state. The new Mac is likely to be an updated version of one of Apple’s existing product lines—a new MacBook Air refresh looks possible for the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference next month—but we don’t know which just yet. If Apple were to move production of any of its product lines back into the country’s borders, it makes sense to start with Macs—they still sell well, but compared to the iPhone and iPad they make up a relatively small portion of Apple’s sales, and Apple has less to lose if there are hiccups. The company has been testing the waters with domestic production since at least the launch of the 2012 iMac. Some of these computers (including our 21.5-inch review unit  but  not our  27-inch review unit ) are (or were) already being made domestically, most likely nearer to Apple’s California headquarters . Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Tim Cook confirms: Apple spending $100 million to build new Macs in Texas

Microsoft talks about Xbox One’s internals, while disclosing nothing

Here’s the money shot: the back of the console has a power connector, HDMI in and out (for the purposes of hooking your cable box up to the console), optical audio out, two USB ports, the Kinect port, an IR Out port, and an Ethernet jack. Kyle Orland The Xbox One is full of technology and after its big reveal, Microsoft talked a little about what’s going into the console, giving some tidbits of info about what makes it tick. Hardware Microsoft says that the Xbox One has five custom-designed pieces of silicon spread between the console and its Kinect sensor. It didn’t elaborate on what these are. There’s a system-on-chip combining the CPU and GPU, which we presume to be a single piece of silicon, and there’s at least one sensor chip in the Kinect, perhaps replacing the PrimeSense processor used in the Xbox 360 Kinect, but what the others might be isn’t immediately clear. Possibilities include audio processors, on-chip memory, and USB controllers. One of the key questions about the AMD-built, 64-bit, 8-core SoC is “how fast is it?” At the moment, that’s unknown. Microsoft claims that the new console has “eight times” the graphics power of the old one, though some aspects of the new system are even more improved; for example, it has 16 times the amount of RAM. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft talks about Xbox One’s internals, while disclosing nothing